Ever found yourself building lots of links only to find it’s barely given you any benefit in your rankings?

When you understand Google you’ll understand why link building is tough… Think about it…

Google uses links as votes for a site. The more links the more votes.

If people manipulate the votes for their sites by building more links, Google’s results become tainted.

Therefore Google is on a mission to protect the user experience by discounting unnatural links.

Google’s webmaster guidelines even go as far to say that you should not participate in any link schemes that intend to ‘manipulate page rank’. In other words Google is against you building links that manipulate your position in the SERPs.

It’s now incredibly obvious why so many link building strategies fail to make a dent in your painfully forceful efforts to rank.

Google is FLAT OUT AGAINST IT!

Don’t get me wrong, link building can and does work. However, realizing the limitations of various link building methods is key, so you can gauge how a specific method will help you rank higher, and how long that effect might last.

It is also important to understand how Google perceives different links, and also your backlink profile as a whole. This can allow you to create more powerful link building campaigns.

Without this knowledge you are flying blind. You may find yourself throwing crap at the wall but nothing seems to stick.

With this knowledge you can accurately plan and implement a link building campaign that gets results.

You can also improve your rankings in a way that requires NO LINK BUILDING! More on this later…

Evolutionary Battle…

When I first started learning about this biz, reciprocal link campaigns were all the rage. The idea was to swap links with any website willing. You link to someone, and they link back to you. That way you get more and more links coming to you.

As time went on, link builders got more sophisticated and set up automated campaigns. From automated reciprocal link networks that you could join, to your own auto-software which would hunt out link partners, and arrange link trades.

It worked really well! For a while…

It got out of hand and Google’s search results were being manipulated too heavily. Anyone could rank anything if they did enough reciprocal links.

Google reacted!

It began discounting the vast majority of reciprocal links, especially those which looked most unnatural. Countless sites saw their rankings disappear off the radar. Hugely profitable traffic wiped out over night. Thousands of business destroyed in one aggressive tactical move from Google.

Once again Google’s search results were looking cleaner. All this happened many years ago!

So then the link builders figured out even more complex schemes to try to rank higher, and the whole thing repeats itself.

Over time Google has worked hard to make it very difficult for you to easily build links to raise your rankings. At the same time link marketers have engineered powerful methods, and create simple, sleek and quick systems to implement them, to push your rankings higher.

Fight Google?

Now, these various link building methods certainly work, but understand that the more people use them, and the more effective they are at manipulating your rankings in Google, the more Google is going to fight Google.

As one method begins to work really well, Google begins to fight back.

This means any particular strategy is going to have a limited lifespan. It may work for a few months or a few years, but eventually Google is going to find a way to filter them out to ‘clean’ its results of manipulation.

Often many businesses become reliant on these methods, especially if they keep working for a long time.

Then one day… BANG!

Google releases a new update and their business is destroyed.

So how should you approach link building with this potential atom bomb waiting to implode and destroy your traffic?

Link Building Limitations…

It is important to understand the limitations of link building as a result of Google’s ongoing effort to weed out manipulation…

• A single link building strategy will likely become less effective over time.
• The more footprints the method leaves, the quicker Google will likely filter it out
• The more effective the method, the quicker Google may act against it
• The more people using it, the quicker Google will probably filter it out
• By staying ahead of the curve and using the latest link building methods you can maintain rankings into the long term, but the ROI is smaller due to increased effort
• Link building methods are going to get more complex and sophisticated to prevent detection from Google
• Link diversity and other ‘natural’ patterns are key to staying off Google’s radar
• Making steps to go beyond what the general marketplace is doing in terms of looking natural, and reducing footprints, will maximize the time any specific strategy will work.
• Google limits the effect of links which can be ‘built’ such as blog comments, links from article directories etc. Therefore it is harder to rank for competitive keywords with such methods.

When Link Building Works & When it Doesn’t?

The more natural and diverse your links appear, the more effective your link building efforts will be. However, be aware that Google knows of most links that you can build yourself, and reduces their sway on Search Results.

For example, Google can recognize blog comments, article directories, poorly spun content, community sites etc., and can give less value to those links.

Did you really think Google, a company with some of the brightest minds in the world, had overlooked all of that?

Certainly not, Google is careful not to be gamed! BUT DON’T LOSE HOPE!

Google does not ignore these links completely and sometimes can’t be sure if they are truly natural or not. Therefore if you build good links then Google will pay attention. Just be aware such links will only take you so far…

• They will get you indexed
• They will get you ranked for very low competition keywords (less than 5000 ‘allintitle’ results)
• With a larger ‘natural’ and diverse link portfolio they will get you ranked for low to medium competition keywords.
• To rank for higher competition keywords it can be exceptionally difficult. You would need a highly advanced BRUTE FORCE system cultivating multiple link building methods to create masses of diverse and natural links over time, mixed with solid content and on-page SEO.

Brute force should not be confused with flooding your site with similar links. That won’t work very well.

The problem with link building is that it needs to be so sophisticated to tackle high competition keywords, that the barrier to entry is high, and the ROI can be low.

Is there a better way?

Link Building Google Likes…

The type of link building Google likes is when you don’t really build links at all. Here is what Google officially says…

“The best way to get other sites to create relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the Internet

community. The more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone

else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it. Before making any single decision, you should ask yourself the question: Is this going to be beneficial for my page’s visitors?

It is not only the number of links you have pointing to your site that matters, but also the quality and relevance of those links. Creating good content pays off: Links are usually editorial votes given by choice, and the buzzing blogger community can be an excellent place to generate interest.”

Do you find that advice a striking contrast to a lot of link building advice online? There’s no mention of submission, automation, high PR etc.

Do you think what Google advises can actually work?

Well since the Panda update Google is now looking at many other non-link-building signals to discover quality content. This includes…

• Social votes across sites like Twitter, Facebook, Digg etc.
• The authority of the person/account providing that vote
• Bounce rate
• Time on site
• Editorially chosen links (editorial votes) and the authority of such links
• Traffic to a site/page

This is why the non-link-building method I have been doing for years is even more powerful today…

If you’ve had any success in ranking going against what Google advises, what do you think the results might be when you follow Google’s advice.

RESULTS…

Yes this is over 1 million visitors!

This was done without any sophisticated link building strategy, but using what I call the

Hook Pigeon method…

This is the AFTER EFFECTS of such a campaign.

You can see traffic keeps rolling in for a full year and I’ve repeated this same method on multiple sites with similar results. Overall I’ve pulled in millions upon millions of visitors from Google.

I’m not saying I don’t build links too on some of my sites, but ultimately this is far more powerful to get your site ranking than any traditional link building method. Understand this and you will become a powerful gatekeeper of traffic.

How do I do it?

I learned how to get attention from Google when I worked for a major blogging network many years ago. They taught me the fundamentals to viral traffic and long term rankings.

They did not pay me enough so I started my own niche blogs and took the Google friendly viral method and ran with it.

Over the years I have systemized this method down into quick-fire campaigns that can be done in as little as thirty minutes, as well as much bigger aggressive campaigns.

I overcame many problems like:

• how to structure content to get attention and action
• how to create awesome viral content without writing more than 20 words
• how to get people to want to share your content on Facebook, Twitter and more
• how to get blogs and news sites to link to your site out of choice
• how to ‘seed’ your content
• how to go viral off other people’s content (no creativity required)
• how to channel this powerful energy to force rankings higher for specific keywords
• how to leverage Google traffic into the long term for passive profit
• how to never have to worry about getting traffic again

I call this the HOOK PIGEON method…

Mixing Pigeon Power with Link Building

The Hook Pigeon method is all about flooding your site with traffic (which is awesome in itself), and doing so in a way that gives Google all the

TRUE signals it desires.

Ultimately your rankings shoot up. However, by doing this you will also build trust, and your other link building efforts will blossom.

I’ve found that Google seems to start paying more attention to those links you have been building, and you can use this to strategically push yourself up the rankings for your ‘money’ keywords!

My record has seen me bring in over 150,000 unique visitors in a 48 hour period, with targeted long term traffic from Google that just keeps coming year after year!